Government needs to get a grip on appalling waste

A Government that fails to ensure its own employees turn up to work is hardly likely to take due care when dispensing taxpayers’ money in welfare payments.

PUBLISHED: 00:00, Tue, Nov 20, 2007

Yesterday, ministers yet again promised to get to grips with the staggering cost of Incapacity Benefit but their proposed new measures were pathetically timid and will not even touch the 2.7 million current claimants.

The extent of Labour’s neglect and incompetence as stewards of public money was underlined by a parliamentary report detailing catastrophic levels of absence by workers in two state agencies.

Staff at the Driving Standards Agency and Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency are averaging in excess of 13 days off sick every year – about three times the normal rate in the private sector. The Commons Public Accounts Committee chairman rightly describes this as “amazingly high” and the fact that the agencies still function indicates that both must be massively overstaffed.

A pattern of overmanning, excessive absenteeism and unsustainable rates of early retirement is prevalent across a huge swathe of the public sector. Ministers have allowed lax management to become the norm and trade unions to rule the roost.

This degree of carelessness with tax revenues is unforgivable at the best of times but when the national finances are in a mess and family budgets under immense pressure it is obscene.